The 36 ordered outcomes are equiprobable. For , let count outcomes with sum . Then and for . Their joint probability is if , and zero otherwise.
If the joint probability is zero, independence is impossible in these ranges because both marginal probabilities are positive. If it is , the independent events condition requires , or . This happens only for , and then all six values of allow the partner . Therefore within the possible sums and faces
If arbitrary integer labels outside these ranges are included, an impossible sum or face defines an empty event, which is trivially independent of every event.
Two independent events satisfy . If , this is equivalent to : learning that occurred does not change the probability of . The product definition also covers zero-probability events without dividing by zero.
Every urn contains balls. Let be its number of blue balls; choosing an urn uniformly makes uniform on . Conditional on that urn, the probability of a blue first draw is , so the law of total probability gives
Drawing twice without replacement requires . Given , the probability that both draws are blue is , and hence
Taking the ratio defining conditional probability gives the second requested probability
Although a blue first draw removes a blue ball from its urn, it also makes an urn rich in blue balls more likely. Averaging with this changed conditional distribution is essential.
For , the conditional probability is . Since the events partition the sample space, their intersections with are disjoint and exhaust . The law of total probability therefore gives . Substituting this and into the definition proves Bayes' theorem:
The denominator is positive by the given hypothesis on .
Evaluation of the probability generating function at zero selects the constant coefficient, so
To identify this limit with ultimate extinction, let . The absorbing-zero property of the branching process gives . Ultimate extinction means that some finite generation is empty, namely . Continuity of probability on increasing events therefore gives
This set argument is essential: it uses absorption, rather than inferring extinction merely from a numerical limit of generation probabilities.
The binomial series gives
Thus and, for ,
with the factors after omitted for . The signs follow from . As , the series has nonnegative terms and its sum increases to , so monotone convergence gives . These are therefore genuine probabilities on the nonnegative integers, proving that is a probability generating function. Its expected value is infinite, since ; finiteness of the mean is not required for this branching process.
Write . The composition formula gives , with . Consequently , and summing the geometric series yields the explicit generation generating function
This is the fractional-power offspring generating function and its iterates.
Given , the next size is a sum of independent reproduction counts. Multiplication of their probability generating functions gives . Averaging this conditional expectation proves
With one initial individual, and , so is the -fold composition of with itself.
A branching process models reproduction through successive generations. In the Galton-Watson process used here, every individual independently produces a nonnegative integer number of offspring with a common offspring distribution; these reproduction counts are independent across individuals and generations. If is the generation size, then
where the have that distribution and the empty sum is zero. Thus zero is absorbing: once a generation is empty, every subsequent generation is empty.
Another convolution of probability densities gives, for ,
Only this part of the density is needed because the fourth length is at most one.
Four positive lengths can form a nondegenerate quadrilateral if and only if every length is less than the sum of the other three. Necessity follows by following the other three sides between the endpoints of the longest side and applying the triangle inequality. For sufficiency, select a diagonal length in the intersection
Both intervals are nonempty, and their intersection is nonempty exactly when and . These are precisely the four strict length inequalities. Construct triangles with sides and on opposite sides of their common diagonal. Their union has the required simple, nondegenerate quadrilateral as boundary.
The failure events, in which one length is at least the sum of the others, are disjoint except on sets of probability zero. For the specified length , independence and the density above give
There are four symmetric choices of the overly long side, so the probability is
This is the four-sided case of the polygon probability for independent uniform rods.
Three positive lengths form a nondegenerate triangle precisely when each is less than the sum of the other two. Necessity is the triangle inequality. For sufficiency, two circles centered at the ends of one side intersect off that side whenever the remaining lengths satisfy these strict inequalities, giving the third vertex.
Failure thus occurs when , , or . Two such inequalities cannot hold together for strictly positive lengths. Zero lengths and equality cases have probability zero because the variables have continuous probability density functions. By symmetry each failure event has the probability just calculated. Hence the probability of forming a triangle is
Conditioning on , independence of gives for and zero for . Using the preceding probability density function,
For independent random variables, the probability density function of a sum is the convolution of probability densities. Since each density is one on and zero elsewhere,
This is the length of . Therefore the density is
The two triangular areas sum to one, as a probability density function must.
With equal type probabilities, and have the same marginal probability generating function, namely . Their assumed independence, together with , gives
Set for . The identity becomes and, after iterations,
The finite expected value gives as . To justify this without any analyticity assumption at the endpoint, note that and is bounded above by ; dominated convergence gives the derivative . Substituting the expansion into the iterated identity yields
The left side is independent of , so it equals the limit. Thus on and uniqueness of the power-series coefficients proves . Only finite expected value was needed; the given finite variance is stronger. This proves the Poisson characterization by independent binomial splitting rather than assuming the original count distribution.
A Poisson distribution with parameter has probability generating function . The preceding part gives , the probability generating function of a Poisson distribution with parameter . To prove independence, retain both counts:
Consequently the joint probability generating function factors as
Comparing the coefficients of proves that the joint probabilities are the products of the marginal probabilities. Hence and are independent, with distributions and . This is Poisson thinning, including the degenerate counts when or .
Conditional on , the type indicators are independent random variables with the Bernoulli distribution of parameter . Thus has the binomial distribution and its probability generating function is . The general rule used here is that for a nonnegative integer-valued random variable , ; for a sum of independent such variables, their probability generating functions multiply, since the expected value of the product factors. The law of total expectation then averages the conditional result:
This calculation uses the given independent labeling of objects, including conditional on their number.
Let , with . The indices in the th dyadic block have one sign, so
A convergent sequence of partial sums must be a Cauchy sequence: for every , all sufficiently late pairs of partial sums differ by less than . The displayed differences violate this necessary condition with , at arbitrarily late endpoints. Thus the series diverges, even though its individual terms tend to zero. This dyadic-block alternation of reciprocal terms has growing block lengths; the fixed-length block argument of the previous part does not apply.
Group three consecutive terms. Their block sum is
Since and for , we have . The comparison test for series and the preceding proof of convergence of show that converges absolutely.
This establishes convergence of the original partial sums at indices . Each intermediate partial sum differs from one of these by at most two of the original terms; those terms tend to zero. Thus all partial sums have the same limit of a sequence, which is the mechanism of convergence from fixed-length series blocks. The original series is not absolutely convergent, since its absolute-value series contains . Therefore the original series converges conditionally.
The absolute-value series can be grouped in pairs of nonnegative terms:
Indeed, for , so these positive partial sums are bounded by two. Completeness of the real numbers proves their convergence. The triangle inequality bounds every late signed sum by the corresponding late absolute-value sum, so absolute convergence implies convergence. Thus the series converges absolutely.
The positive terms decrease to zero. The alternating series test just proved therefore gives convergence of the signed series. It is conditional convergence: , so , and the absolute-value series dominates the divergent harmonic series.
The comparison test for series used here says that if , convergence of implies convergence of , while divergence of implies divergence of . This follows by comparing increasing partial sums. For completeness, the harmonic series diverges because every block from to has sum at least .
Orient the axis towards and measure positive angles by the right-hand rule about . The vectors , and form a positively oriented orthonormal basis, since . Its change-of-basis matrix is
Relative to this basis, the rotation fixes the first coordinate and rotates the last two. Writing and , its matrix in the standard basis is therefore
In particular , , and , verifying the axis and the direction of rotation. Reversing the chosen orientation of the axis replaces by .

Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project

Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
We have two killer features:
  1. topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculus
    Articles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
    • a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
    • a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
    This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
    Figure 1.
    Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page
    . View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivative
  2. local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:
    This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
    Figure 5. . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.
    Video 3.
    Edit locally and publish demo
    . Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
  4. Infinitely deep tables of contents:
    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
    Descendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact